Yellow fever and malaria : evidence given before the Royal Commission / by William Osler.

  • Osler, William, Sir, 1849-1919.
Date:
[1908?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Yellow fever and malaria : evidence given before the Royal Commission / by William Osler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    are 20,000 whites on the Isthmus at work; of course, nearly all of those are non-immune. There has been practically no yellow fever, and what is much more important, because it was not the yellow fever that killed the Trench to the same extent, there is no malaria. In these experiments that you have been detailing to us, animals do not come in; the animal experimented upon was man l—That is so, only as man is an animal. I am referring to those experiments only as an illustration that it is through the experimental side of medicine, the experimental spirit in medicine, that these great revolutions have been effected, revolutions with which there is nothing else in human endeavour to compare from the standpoint of humanity. There is not anything else in the whole development of the British nation that is going to have so much importance as the discovery of the mode of transmission of malaria. It is going to make the tropics habitable. And all this has come about through the experimental method and the experimental spirit. Without these such investiga- tions could not have been made, and these perfectly phenomenal results could not have been achieved. It was the same spirit that gave us anaesthesia, and the same spirit that has given us antiseptic surgery, and the same spirit which has given us preventive medicine— three things which stand out in the record of human achievement, with which nothing else may be compared—I mean from the stand- point of every-day, common humanity. Then your contention would be that this experimental investigation into the interaction between the mosquito and man producing yellow fever would never haw been thought of,if it had not been for previous experiments on animals !—Never. The men who made these investigations spent their lives in laboratories, and their whole work has been based on experimentation on animals. They could not otherwise, of course, have ventured to devise a series of experiments of this sort. Could you experiment with yellow fever on animals ?—Yes, recently Wolferston Thomas, from the Liverpool School, working iri Demerara, I think, has shown that it is capable of transmission to one of the higher antln'opoid apes. Do the natives talce yelloiu fever !—Yes, everywhere; but they often have it in such a mild form, and have it as children. Still, even in that mild form, the mosquito would transmit it ?—Yes. I understand that when the mosquito has once bitten a patient suffering from yellow fever, after the first 10 or 12 days it remains capable of transmitting the disease during its short life !—Sometimes it is a comparatively long life—many months. Has that been determined ! — Yes, it will live through many months ; it will live through the winter.